Dear Facebook, more news please?

By Amara Aguilar

Updated 5:57 PM ET, Thu June 30, 2016

Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds.

Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

It has been more than 10 years of change for Facebook, the social network founded February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg, right, Dustin Moskovitz and three other classmates in a Harvard dorm room. From its awkward beginnings to an international phenomenon with 1.4 billion users, here's a look at the many faces of Facebook.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2004: Facebook launches – It was first known as "Thefacebook" when it launched at Harvard University as a way for students to connect. The social-networking site spread to Columbia, Stanford and Yale universities the following month, and the Facebook Wall made its debut in September. By December, Thefacebook had nearly 1 million users.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2005: Students spread the word – The site grew beyond the Ivy League to include more than 800 colleges and universities by May 2005, and its official name changed from Thefacebook to just Facebook that August. Facebook began allowing high school students to join in September.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2006: Meet the News Feed – By 2006, anyone 13 and up was allowed to join Facebook. That same year Facebook introduced the News Feed, which highlighted new updates and photos within your social networks. As they would after almost every major change, Facebook users revolted, starting a petition to change Facebook back. One petitioner said, "I don't need to know everything about EVERYONE."

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2007: Another new design – Facebook updated its site design in April 2007, moving friends, networks and the inbox to the top of each page and photos, notes, groups and events to a bar on the left. Facebook Platform launched in May, which allowed for developers to create third-party apps. (Another backlash erupted when those apps started requesting personal information.) Later that year, Facebook introduced ads, which convinced some users the site was going the way of MySpace.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2008: New profile pages – Facebook profile pages were redesigned in 2008 to add five main tabs: Feed, Wall, Info, Photos and Boxes. The new design was, as usual, met with negative comments from users resistant to change. Facebook also debuted its Chat feature that year, allowing real-time instant messaging.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2009: The 'Like' button – The "Like" button was introduced on Facebook in 2009, letting users show appreciation for clever status updates or pictures of their friends' cats getting into shenanigans. Cynical users demanded a "Dislike" button. Facebook also launched Pages to let fans follow celebrities, sports teams or causes.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2010: Growing privacy concerns – Facebook introduced instant personalization, which gave partner websites information about users so they could personalize your experience. Advocacy groups like the ACLU reacted negatively to the new feature, saying users should have to opt in instead of getting the setting by default. Under pressure, Zuckerberg tweaked Facebook's settings to give users greater control over privacy.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2010: Facebook adds 'check-ins' – Taking a cue from apps like Foursquare (and rival Gowalla, which it eventually bought in 2011), Facebook launched Places, which allowed mobile users to check in at their locations. The most "checked-in" spot? Disneyland.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2011: Photos, photos everywhere – By February 2011, Facebook had become the Web's largest host of photographs. Over its decade, users have uploaded more than 250 billion photos to the site. And by the end of the year, it began scrapping users' Walls in favor of another layout change. Fast forward to 2012 ...

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2011: Facebook Messenger – Mobile users who want to message friends can do so using the Messenger app, introduced in 2011.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2012: Hello, Timeline – In the spring of 2012, Facebook forced all users to convert to its Timeline profile layout, which arranged updates in chronological order, searchable by year.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

2013: Going mobile – By late 2013, Facebook reported that 945 million of its 1.2 billion users were visiting via a smartphone or tablet. After years as a Web-first product, Facebook began putting a new emphasis on mobile tools, growth and revenue.

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2013: Verified accounts – Following a trend made popular by Twitter, Facebook allowed select Pages for people, sports, media and government to become verified in 2013. The badges show a page's authentic affiliation.

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2013: Hashtags – Hashtags were introduced to Facebook in 2013. The hashtag was created on Twitter in 2007 as a way of pulling together different posts about the same topic.

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2015: Embedded Facebook videos – Facebook began competing with YouTube by allowing users to upload videos directly to the social network. In 2015, they also began allowing users to easily embed Facebook videos in other platforms.

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Photos:Facebook's biggest changes

Facebook published this map in 2013 that shows its global reach. The lighter a country or region, the higher its concentration of Facebook users (note the black hole of China). But some believe the social network has reached a saturation point and is poised for a decline, especially among fickle younger users.

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Story highlights

Aguilar: Facebook and other social media platforms are critical engines for storytelling

Facebook's changes to news feed will hurt users by only showing same old stories, she says

Amara Aguilar is an associate professor of professional practice in digital journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.

(CNN)Dear Facebook,

It's called a news feed. It should have news in it.

You recently changed your algorithm to make posts by friends and family appear higher in news feeds, which basically means news feeds won't have as much actual "news" prioritized in them.

Amara Aguilar

This is a blow to media organizations, but even more than that, it will hurt your users.

Stories are what connect us. Stories from friends and family, yes, but also stories we haven't heard yet. Media organizations give us stories outside of our comfort zone. We need those stories.

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Journalism contributes to a democratic society. Ideally, it informs people so they can make their own choices. You are limiting those choices by pushing publishers lower in a user's news feed. (Note: CNN is one of the publishers affected by this decision.)

Facebook, you have a lot of power and with that a weighty responsibility within society and the media ecosystem. It's time to step up and realize the impact you have on the dissemination of information.

Many media organizations have flocked to Facebook to engage audiences, create community and tell compelling stories. You at some level recognize that this is valuable -- you are even paying some of them to create content. However, even though not every story will go viral or get a lot of shares, that doesn't mean every story shouldn't receive the opportunity to be seen at all.

Don't get me wrong. I love connecting with friends and family on Facebook, but I also log on to Facebook to see stories from my favorite media organizations high in my feed. That's why I "liked" BuzzFeed's page or The New York Times' page. I rarely look at their websites (sorry, BF and NYT). I get a lot of my news on social media. And so do a lot of other people in the US, according to the Pew Research Center.

And now you are taking part of that away from your users. You say the challenge you now face is "far too much information for any one person to consume." Well, then, let's just take out the most important stories from news organizations and journalists who inform us of what's going on in the world and fill everyone's feed with cuddly kittens, travel photos and viral stories with the most shares. That's definitely more important than widening someone's view of the world.

All the while, you are claiming as part of your "News Feed Values" that the goal of the feed is "to show people the stories that are most relevant to them." Well, according to whom? According to what someone's inner circle of friends and family share, and according to your algorithm? I like Chewbacca Mom as much as the next person, but that's not the only thing I want to see all over my "news" feed.

Facebook, you have a unique opportunity to engage people, especially young people, in a larger world, with diverse views, news and stories outside the scope of friends and family. Please take advantage of that opportunity.

You say in your "News Feed Values" that a user's "feed should inform." Yes, please. That should also include informing users about the world and stories they may not get because people in their circle of family and friends, who could have similar backgrounds and beliefs, didn't share them.

You say that Facebook is "a platform for all ideas." I assume that means all ideas from our family and friends, because those are the ideas we'll all be seeing from now on. You say, "We are not in the business of picking which issues the world should read about." Really? Well, who's in charge of the algorithm then?

You say that your "integrity depends on being inclusive of all perspectives and viewpoints, and using ranking to connect people with the stories and sources they find the most meaningful and engaging." Again, the algorithm change doesn't reflect this affirmation of inclusivity, because many times, when people go outside the circle of family and friends, they find even more diverse perspectives. And now your users are not only disincentivized to venture beyond their own circles, they are also functionally hindered by your algorithm from indulging their curiosity.

You say: "We don't favor specific kinds of sources — or ideas." Yes, you do. Again, family and friends. Many of us enjoy using your platform to communicate with family and friends, but times have changed -- and in large measure, you're the one who changed them. You and your users alike have made Facebook, like other social media platforms, a space that can foster engagement, community and storytelling. To act now as if Facebook's news feed is just for family and friends is a myopic throwback at best.

Facebook, you say you view your work "as only 1 percent finished." I seriously hope this is only 1 percent, because you have a long way to go. You say you will "continue soliciting feedback."

Well, here's mine: Put some actual news back at the top of my news feed.

Amara Aguilar is an associate professor of professional practice in digital journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. The opinions expressed in this commentary are hers.